1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telephony including data network telephony and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus enabling a consumer-controlled conferencing feature for contact centers or other third-party service providers.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
The field of telephony communications has expanded with the advent of the Internet network and accompanying protocols such as voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and others that enable video and voice communications over data networks such as the Internet and connected sub-networks. One area where telephony advances are commonly tested and deployed are contact centers that provide information and transaction services for corporate and small business clients. Many state-of-art contact centers employ automated attendants like an interactive voice response (IVR) unit to provide selectable options to incoming callers and then connect those callers to the selected services, which may include routing to live agents or further automated options or processes. A universal goal of contact center and other customer contact applications is to develop more loyal customers for the represented business or corporate client.
State-of-art contact centers also employ outbound contact servers and software to reach potential customers at home. Outbound contact services are also employed to contact potential customers that are visiting enterprise Web pages like product description pages or the like. Outbound contact services may be designed for Web-based advertisements and linked to such ads so that any interaction with an ad triggers an invitation to speak to a live agent or to receive a call back at some later time. Among other contact center tools are multi-party conferencing applications that connect multiple parties to a same communications session wherein all parties can interact with one another and wherein all of the interaction may be recorded for later use.
Several challenges exist for enterprise contact systems including contact centers relative to reaching a larger number of potential consumers. Outbound contact campaigns are largely predictive in nature meaning that a percentage of contacts dialed are not available at the time of dial. Moreover, a percentage of those potential customers reached through outbound contact are placed in queue because all agents are busy helping others. This may result in drop out from queue and call abandonment in some cases. In general, outbound campaigns require much planning and orchestration, and utilize significant contact center resources.
With respect to conferencing tools, current applications are agent-centric meaning that the utility is used mainly for multi-party meetings for planning, or to aid in resolving customer issues such as technical issues or problems with products or services. Customers have no control over conference call set-up or implementation and therefore have no control in which parties are connected or what outcomes may occur. It has occurred to the inventors that if, at the point of contact, a customer could be caused to initiate a telecommunications conference that could include other potential customers on the fly or scheduled to attend, significant improvement in efficient and cost-effective customer contact might result.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a telecommunications conferencing feature for contact centers or other third-party providers that allows users in communication with the center or provider to initiate a conference session, and to control, at least to some extent, which other persons will be invited to participate in the conference session, and how the invitation process is orchestrated.